Diseño de Materiales - Week 11 - Frameworks to Systematize Materials Development
Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 11 of the course Diseño de Materiales for the Licenciatura in English Teaching program at ULACIT. In this class we will begin looking at some key concepts from Chapter 7 in McGrath to learn some useful frameworks to develop lessons or activity sequences based on a text.
Today's Goals:
- Particpate in two demo lesson sequences and analyze them to describe their potential use in materials development.
- Choose a sample text and propose activties to exploit it following the stages of the Text-Driven Approach.
Guiding Questions:
- How can I make materials development a time efficient process?
- What is the Text-Driven Approach (TDA) to materials development?
- What are the functions of Axbey's Pre-While-Post (PWP) framework for receptive skills development?
- How are TDA and PWP cycles similar and different?
Task 1: TDA Demo - Nasty School
You will participate in a demo lesson following the Text-Driven Approach. Follow the teacher's instructions and enjoy the activity sequence as a student. Later you will analyze what happened in the sequence from a materials design perspective.
- Introduction: You are going to hear a poem about children behaving badly in school. Before you listen to the poem, discuss these questions with your partners:
- What are some rules that kids typically have to follow in school?
- What are some ways that kids misbehaved when you were a student?
- Listen and Read: You are going to hear the first part of the poem called “Nasty School” by Shel Silverstein, a poet who was very popular with children when I was young. As you listen, imagine you are a 3rd grader in this elementary school. Try to visualize the answers to these questions. (CLICK HERE to access the poem)
- What are you wearing?
- What and who do you see around you?
- What are you thinking and feeling?
- Share some of the images that came to your mind. Did you ever do any of the behaviors mentioned in the poem?
- Now you are going to hear the second part of the poem where you will hear about what students learn at Nasty School. As you listen, imagine you are a naughty child in Nasty School. Visualize yourself doing these naughty things.
- Discussion: Discuss the following questions with your partners:
- What do you think of the poem?
- What is an image that stays in your mind related to the poem?
- Why do you think this poet was popular with children?
- Do you agree that it is sometimes fun to break the rules?
- Some people think that one of the primary functions of school is to teach children to control their impulses and learn how to be obedient. Do you agree with this perspective?
- What role should school shave in the formation of values and good behavior in society?
- Writing: Now you are going to write your own poem about one of the following imaginary schools. Choose your school and write a brief poem discussing what happens in this school, how students behave, and what they learn to do. CLICK HERE and go to your section of the document.
- Pleasant School: A utopian school where children learn to be model citizens
- Tico School: An academy where foreigners learn to think and behave like Costa Ricans
- School of Life: A school where children learn essential non-academic life skills that will prepare them for the real world
- Speaking: Re-read the first part of the poem with your partners and then read the roles information below to participate in an improvised roleplay with your group members.
- Student A: You are Johnny, a very misbehaved 3rd grader. You have been very disruptive in class for several months. You are a good kid but being naught is just so fun. Now it is time for the semester parent-teacher conference. You know that your teacher is going to tell your parents about all of the bad things you have been doing. Try to minimize your behavior to avoid punishment from your parents.
- Student B: You are Johnny’s mother or father. You know your son can be a little hyperactive but you think he is a good kid. Now it is time for the semester parent-teacher conference. Ask the teacher questions to find out how Johnny has been behaving.
- Student C: You are Johnny’s teacher. His terrible behavior has made your job a nightmare for the last six months. Now it is time for the parent-teacher conference. You want to explain to Johnny’s mom or dad all of the bad things that he has done and get their support to help him change his behavior.
- Language Focus: Now let's take a moment to look at the poem again. What do you notice about he verbs after the word "how"?
- Finish this sentence about you: "In school I learned how to ..."
- Let's Try: Let's go back to the school poems document and complete the final task as a group.
Task 2: Exploring the Text-Driven Approach
Now that you have learned about the structure of the Text-Driven Approach, discuss the following questions with your partners.
CLICK HERE to view the lesson plan.
- How did the text influence the activities that occured at each stage in the lesson?
- What language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) were addressed in the lesson sequence?
- Tomlinson says that texts and tasks used in class should be cognitively (intellectually) and affectively (emotionally) engaging for students in order to provide the ideal conditions for langauge development. Where you cognitvely or affectively engaged by the text or any of the tasks? If so, how?
- TDA depends on finding or creating texts with a high degree of potential engagement, what are some kinds of texts that your learners would find engaging? Why?
Task 3: An Alternative View of Textbooks
CLICK HERE to view a sample unit from a textbook series called
Searching that was developed for Norwegian elementary school children to be used with a Text-Driven Approach. Skim the unit and discuss these questions.
- What do you notice is different about this textbook compared to the standard EFL textbook?
- The activities and tasks of a TDA lesson are inspired by the text itself and the teacher should use their creativity to develop their own activities to help students make a personal connection with the text. Choose a text and tell your partners what you could have students do in the following sections.
- Readiness Activities: Learners think about something personal which will help them connect with the content of the core text.
- Experiential Activities: Learners link the images and thoughts from the readiness activities to the text when first experiencing it.
- Intake Response Activities: Learners develop and then articulate personal responses to the text. These are not comprehension questions. They are interpretation and opinion questions.
- Development Activities: Learners develop the text by continuing it, relocating it, changing the writer’s views, personalizing it, responding to it, etc.
- Input Response Activities: Learners focus on a specific linguistic, pragmatic, discourse, genre or cultural features of the text in order to make discoveries about its use.
- Additional Development Activities: Learners revise what they wrote or said in the first developmental activities as a result of the discoveries they made in the input response activities.
Task 4: Exploring Axbey's PWP Cycle
CLICK HERE to access the dialogue and follow the teacher's instructions.
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